Suzy Says

I had a busy weekend planned, but Fate had other plans…

We were going to have family dinner on Saturday at Rio’s place. It would be the first time we had gotten together since our belated Thanksgiving, and the first time this new-ish year. But Megan picked up a virus at work – the hazards of working in an emergency room, with all those sick people* – and didn’t want to share her cooties with us. The weather chimed in, smacking us with a storm which made the prospect of driving over the rivers and through the woods to Rio’s** house both unappealing and inadvisable. So we called off family dinner, or at least rescheduled it, probably until the first weekend in February.

Coincidentally, the cancelled night would have been Burns’ Night, and I had a poem all ready to take with me and have my brother read out loud. It was especially perfect since it was January. Given the drive, we wouldn’t be sipping whiskey with our poetry, but we would have had handmade cider, which is a British tradition and could be an acceptable substitute. If we do have family dinner on the first Saturday in February, we can celebrate Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birthday instead of Robbie Burns’, and homegrown, home-made food and cider will be just as appropriate for that.

It’s harder for me to tell how rainy it is outside when I’m inside the house now. My old place had no insulation, and its Quonset hut shape made the roof and the walls the same thing, so the rain was everywhere and it was really loud. It was also, like a horror movie villain, inside the house. When I look back, I’m a little surprised by how I just took it in stride that there was a merry little brook in the laundry room/pantry in the winter, the puddle by the Christmas tree, the one in the foyer, etc. Here I have stepped outside and been shocked by the fact that it’s hot outside or pouring with rain.

So when Megan texted me on Sunday to say that it was raining so hard that the roads would probably flood and close that day, we decided it would be wiser not to go to Point Arena to see the ballet. We were both disappointed, since we were looking forward to it so much. It was Raymonda, a grand ballet from the 19th century which we had never seen before (and still haven’t). The next one is in March and is Giselle. I think we made the right decision, but we were both sorry to have missed it.

It also meant that I had no Sunday dinner, since I was naturally planning to get Thai food in Anchor Bay. I always have pizza dough in the freezer, so I thawed that and looked around in the refrigerator, where I found salami, an onion, and capers to substitute for the olives I didn’t have. I also always have a tube of Italian tomato paste in the refrigerator, so I put that on the dough first, then everything else. Finished it with Asiago and parmesan, and it was very good indeed. Not as glamorous as ballet and Thai food, but still good.

*Years of this have given her a kick ass immune system. It takes a particularly nasty bug to make her sick. I appreciate her not sharing with us. Sometimes not sharing is caring.
**She is, and always will be, the only grandmother among us. Grandson Number 4 is scheduled to arrive on March 10!

A YEAR AGO: We actually made it to the ballet. And it was wonderful.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Making bread.

TEN YEARS AGO: Glitz and glamor at the Legion of Honor museum.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Getting ready for a road trip to Florida. Or at least thinking about getting ready.

We are in the throes of the annual fundraiser, and as you know, nothing annual is ever good. This is no exception. There’s a week left to go, and I just have to get through it. I’m the Little Suzy That Could!

When things like this are going on, I feel less like doing things like meeting my friends after work, but this is exactly when I need to do it. So I’ve given myself the gift of time with my friends despite all the fundraising madness. One evening, I met my friend Richard at a lovely bar in Hooterville, overlooking the wintry ocean:

You can see the rain out at sea, and it stayed there as Richard and I caught up with each other’s news. We used to work together at the jobette, and now neither of us does, and we are both better off for that change in Fate, even if we couldn’t see it at the time.

As is his wont, Richard has been traveling, but it’s been more domestic than international. His wife recently retired and spent a couple of months with her very aged father, who used to play major league baseball for the Chicago White Sox. He lives on a plantation in Louisiana:

with his dog named Snack Bar:

This is the twelfth dog with the same name. They are all the same breed, too.

Richard retrieved his wife and they drove back to California together, taking the southern route since it’s winter, stopping along the way to spend New Year’s Eve with yet another former jobette alumnus in Tucson, of whom I am quite fond, too. We had a great time together. He is so positive and caring and has such interesting perspectives on everything.

Last night, I stopped off to meet my friend Erin in the Village. Like Richard, she too used to work at the jobette, and like us, she has now gone on to (much) better things. I’m lucky I met such great people there and that we are still good friends.

Our original plan was to have a drink in the bar of the historic hotel, but we discovered that the bar was closed until much later due to the winter season. One thing about living in a resort area is that it tends to quieten down quite a lot in the off season. So we repaired to a restaurant down the street, where we had a stunning view of the still stormy ocean.

Time flew by until it was time for Erin to pick up her son from basketball practice. We promised each other that we would get together next month, at Erin’s house. She has been making changes to her kitchen and I am dying to see it. Maybe spending more time with my friends this year is a resolution I will keep!

On my way home, I was delighted to notice a rainbow arching into the pink clouds over the Ridge:

It was the perfect end to the day.

A YEAR AGO: The power was off! And on! And off again!

FIVE YEARS AGO: Leaving the jobette. It was hard. But I’m glad I still have my friends from working there.

TEN YEARS AGO: Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: A little quiz about me. Fifteen years later, most of it’s still true. Is that good or bad?

It was a busy week. All those library meetings! And then I had an 8 am call on Saturday morning with my former boss/partner and long-time friend Adrian to discuss his latest venture, a tax preparation service. We’ll see if anything comes of it. If there’s one thing I could use, it’s a jobette. Or a wealthy benefactor. I didn’t have much time to get dressed and out the door to meet Megan.

It may seem odd that I left the house at 10 am to go to a play that started at 1 pm, but a) it’s a long drive to the theater; and 2) we had important errands to run. The first of these was stopping in at Franny’s, conveniently located across from the theater. For once, there was no line until we created one. Megan got the last bacon slipper for lunch, and I got a croque monsieur. We both got canelés, too. It was a successful mission.

Next up was Anchor Bay Thai, where we discovered that the beautiful peacock mural which had been started at an earlier visit was now complete, and just gorgeous:

Peacocks and peonies – what’s not to love? It reminded me of a long-ago visit to Isola Bella in the Italian Lakes, and seeing the beautiful white peacocks there. I almost want to dig out my diaries from that visit and read about it again.

We stowed our dinners in the car and headed back to the theater, where we bagged the last space in the parking lot and our traditional balcony seats. The play was Noel Coward’s “Present Laughter”, and despite being written in the 1930s, it was still as fresh and funny today as the day it was written. The sets were lovely and Art Deco looking, and the cast was wonderful. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

It was still light out when we left the theater and headed to our favorite seaside bar. It was too cloudy for a sunset, but no matter what the weather is, it’s the best view on the coast. The new bartender Miriam (our beloved long-serving bartender Aiyana is still there on Wednesdays) made us fabulous appletinis:

as we waited for Monica to join us. The bar was full, and as the sun slipped into the ocean behind the clouds, it just felt cozier. One of the things I love about that place is you can come there for a special occasion, or from a day of gardening, and feel special and taken care of. Whether you’re a local or a tourist, you’ll feel right at home.

It was nice to catch up with Monica. She has been busy rescuing a dog and taking kick boxing classes. She is stronger and happier, and that’s what you want to see in your friends. If it’s not too late to make a resolution, mine is to spend more moments like this.

A YEAR AGO: A lengthy and unenjoyable power outage. Welcome to winter!

FIVE YEARS AGO: A very enjoyable family dinner.

TEN YEARS AGO: Lots of rain. But not lots of enthusiasm for the rain.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Deciding on a road trip to Florida. It was quite the adventure.

One thing I hadn’t anticipated when I somehow became chair – or, as they call it, president, not a title I care to have these days – of the library last year was all the meetings and events involved in this volunteer, and as far as I can see, pretty much perk-free position. As the only board member who still works full time (and apparently, the only board chair they have ever had who works full time) and the only one who lives in faraway Hooterville, I felt like I could skip some of the events from time to time when I was just a board member. Now I feel obligated to go, and indeed it seems that I am often expected to run the show and give speeches, another unlovely aspect of my exalted state.

So it was that I had a library meeting on Friday, another one on Saturday, and yet another one is looming this Friday. Last Friday’s meeting was a special one to discuss delays in dismantling the decrepit house next door. Before I joined the library board, they had bought a long vacant house and lot next door with a view to expanding the current library facilities into that space. One of my duties as chair was to find someone to do it. He has been doing a great job and is salvaging as much of the amazing redwood as he can, some of which has been set aside for the (distant) future expansion, but he expected to be done by the end of the old year, when his contract expired, and he has not. So the meeting was to hammer out these details and for me to sign them, along with the contractor.

The Saturday meeting was the annual meeting, which I blithely skipped last year, but could not this year. This year I had to emcee the proceedings, while having no idea what they were exactly. They included presenting the budget which I had put together with our Treasurer earlier in the year, even though I have never created a business budget before. Not knowing how to do things doesn’t seem to stop me, even if it should. I think it all went as well as such things can, though I am unenthused about yet another meeting hovering on the horizon. Three in about a week is too many. At least the next one is not on a weekend.

After the latest meeting, I spent some time chatting with the audience, including someone who asked me if I was related to Jonathan, since our last name is unusual. According to HowManyofMe, there are only around 120 of us with the same last name in the entire country. It turned out that this gentleman had recently retired from his Silicon Valley job, and from caring for his mother, who passed away just short of the age of 105. He moved here and met my brother through their shared interest in ham radio.

One of the board members, who is 85, told us that she grew up on a ranch in what was then called Santa Clara Valley rather than Silicon Valley, and in those days, there were just fruit trees as far as the eye could see. She described the Valley in springtime as “clouds of blossoms”. I was interested to note that nearly everyone I chatted with that day was a native Californian, including some who have lived right here for generations. It was nice to feel connected to our community and appreciate how the library and everyone who works there, in whatever capacity, is enriching our little corner of the world.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Visiting Erica and Jessica. Why didn’t I do that more often when I could?!

strong>TEN YEARS AGO: Kitty antics, inside and out.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: An airport adventure.

When I turn off the highway onto my new(ish) Ridge, I feel like I have successfully left the world behind me and escaped it yet again. Going home, I drive uphill, passing an old inn which stands empty as far as I know, though sometimes there are random lights on in random parts of the building at random times of day. The inn used to be a stage coach stop in the pioneer days, and there are still bullet holes in the ceiling of the parlor. There must be a novel or at least a short story there.

Beyond the inn, there are fields of cows and horses. I’m sorry to report that as we approach the middle of January (and the middle of winter), that the meadows are still wearing some summer gold instead of winter green. We’ve only had about 14 inches of rain, and I am already worried about fire season and drought. But the cows and horses don’t seem to be worried.

As I continue down the road, I pass under bowers of trees:

This ridge seems higher than the old one, and it’s dramatic to see all the hills and redwoods. I have not been able to find a good vantage point to take a picture of this. But I do have visual proof that this is God’s country:

And a bench that agrees with this theory:

After the sign and the bench, I cross a narrow redwood bridge, shaded by tall redwoods. At this point, the road stops pretending that it’s two lanes and becomes one. If I meet a neighbor, one of us pulls over so the other can pass. There are fewer cars on this ridge, and we almost always wave at each other when we pass, even when we don’t know each other. It’s a neighborly place.

I recently learned that the place I think of as the Waltons’, since the house reminds me of the one on the long ago TV show, is actually a pineapple-guava ranch:

I had also never heard of, let alone tasted, a pineapple-guava, though I did wonder what all those trees were. Apparently the ranch belongs to a successful author of tween novels like Sweet Valley High, but not actually Sweet Valley High.

It’s not far to my house after that, the road wending its way up and around through the tall, ancient redwoods, with lush ferns and rhododendrons underneath. There is a lot more wildlife here: wild turkeys, foxes, possums, skunks, deer. Sometimes it feels like a magical kingdom. I hope I will be driving down this road for many years to come, arriving at this gate:

to find my kitties looking for me through the glass front door.

A YEAR AGO: The kitties were being naughty. Some things never change!

FIVE YEARS AGO: The horrors of health insurance.

TEN YEARS AGO: A little earthquake. Just a reminder that the big one is coming one day.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: The horrors of flying. I can’t say I miss flying.

Happy New Year!

There has to be some kind of 2020 vision joke I can make here, but maybe because I’ve had glasses for more than half a century (!), I can’t think of one. I did approach 2020 relatively clear-eyed, mostly because I barely made it to the east coast new year, sparkling wine in hand.

Maybe because I was born in New York – and despite the fact that I think of myself as a Californian, having spent most of my adult life here – I still think of the ball drop in New York as the “real” new year. Nothing like fireworks and Sinatra to usher in the clean slate of the new year.

I haven’t really made any resolutions, though perhaps I should blog more often than I have been lately. The fact that I took over my workplace’s Facebook page has made me much less likely to write on my own Facebook page, let alone on my blog, and taking on the chore of being the library board chair has also taken a toll on my always limited free time. There are so many more events and meetings than I anticipated. Not to mention speeches.

I’d also like to spend more time with my family. I realize this sounds odd, considering that all three of us live in Hooterville, but especially since I’ve moved and am now 12 miles away instead of 100 yards or a quarter of a mile has meant we see each other less often. I don’t think we had family dinner all summer, and we didn’t get together for Christmas because of schedules. I’m plotting a get together in early February.

Here’s to the arrival of a new year and all its possibilities!

A YEAR AGO: A very entertaining day – and evening.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A chilly, but tidy start to the new year.